


The Bad Time Gang

by strawberrysummer



Series: Cracktastic Adventures with Moonie and Nugget [2]
Category: Undertale
Genre: Mild Blood, Mild Language, Minor Violence, Original Character(s), Viatoremtale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22265947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrysummer/pseuds/strawberrysummer
Summary: This time, Starspen gets dragged back to Nightmare's castle after Error finally catches up with them again. Prepare for operation: "OH GOD THERE'S A FUCKING BIRD IN THE HOUSE. GET IT. GET IT. GET IT."
Series: Cracktastic Adventures with Moonie and Nugget [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601800
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	The Bad Time Gang

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moonie711](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonie711/gifts).



> Smth I wrote for one of my BFFs, Moonie711. This bitch bae.  
> Also I'mma be totes real w/ u guys. Uhhh I forgot about Cross being in the BTG because I associate him mainly with Underverse??? not the other AUs or characters in the BTG? uhhh but I added him in. Also Killer finally said something. lmao enjoy ig it's probably out of character for what most ppl think of them as but it's for funsies so u know

Most meetings typically consisted of roughly spoken words in a hushed, darkened environment.

These monsters typically gathered when it was necessary, which, lately, seemed to be all the time these days. There was always some kind of issue or another that needed addressing, most of which Nightmare found himself dealing with on some level, given that he was the one corralling all of the rest of the idiots he gathered with.

Currently, he and the rest of the Bad Time Gang, this time graced by Error as well, were collected in the meeting space Nightmare had cleared for the fifth time that month of debris from various fights breaking out. Dangling from the vaulted ceiling from cobalt threads was yet another skeleton with magic of blue and gold, bones of grey and black, still gently swinging from her earlier struggle to wiggle out of her restraints.

Starspen looked at the upside-down image of all the various, seemingly angry and/or excited skeletons around her. After their initial encounter, Error had caught up with her a few weeks later and managed to put enough strings around her limbs that she couldn’t move, let alone bite at them like a trapped animal. And now, there in front of them, she hung, swaying a bit with her limbs entangled in threads of various thickness. Escape didn’t really seem possible at the moment, so she blinked slowly and stared back at her assaulters.

“Look guys, I’m all for hanging around but like- this is kind of uncomfortable,” the colorful skeleton mumbled, only for Error to snap at her harshly.

“Sh-sh-shut up!” he hissed, causing Starspen to huff and for Nightmare to roll his singular eyelight.

**“Both of you silence yourselves,”** he commanded, and Starspen shook her head with a small sigh. She busied herself with watching the others, instead, taking a mental headcount and calculating her chances of survival… which seemed to be climbing higher by the moment, given all of the infighting she had already witnessed. The only one truly at the dark, goopy one’s beck and call was the one someone had called “Killer”. Everyone else seemed far more aloof, or even angry like Error seemed to be. Too easy.

Starspen looked at the one with his hood up as he approached her, her eyelights flickering down to the short bone he held in his hand that was sharpened to a point. He seemed to be the only one not entirely ignoring her, other than the big one in the background that just… seemed to loom no matter the situation. Blue and gold met red and blue, Starspen felt the prick of something sharp biting into the hollow of her throat, where her bi-colored magic skin began and met together to make green.

“can’t we just kill them, already?” a softer voice compared to the others spoke up, coming from the skeleton in front of her. She was surprised, given the dark, raspy nature of most of the other voices in the room.

“Good luck with that,” she muttered under her breath, but didn’t have a chance to say more before Nightmare spoke up again.

**“You know the rules, Dust. We don’t kill them until we get them to squirm first,”** came his dark, signature voice. Starspen rolled her eyelights.

“But I HAVE been squirming! Basically this whole time!” she protested, as if arguing on Dust’s side. Dust gave her an odd look, but gave Nightmare another, pointed one, as if he agreed.

Nightmare stared at the both of them for a moment before a sneer took over his face, gleaming white teeth in stark contrast with the rest of his dark body. It was then that Error decided it was his turn to pipe up again, voice straining and glitching due to the stress surrounding him at the situation.

“Don’t-on’t play with it! It’s just go-onna fuck right-ight back with you-you!” he insisted, and Nightmare glanced back his way, distracted from Starspen and Dust for the moment. “That thing is cur- _ cursed _ .”

**“You managed to capture it just fine. Unless… Are you saying you’re barely competent of keeping them under control?”** Nightmare suggested to Error, his sneer widening and Error’s eye’s filling with a few “error” warnings. He clenched his fists, hissing a bit, but Nightmare was already turning his attention back to Starspen and Dust.

“Hey, that kinda hurts,” Starspen complained to Dust, as he was pressing the tip of the sharpened bone he held further into her magic skin, piercing the thick layer on top just barely and allowing a thin trickle of an oddly silver, shimmering blood to flow from behind the magic, not matching either of the colors at all.

Intrigued, Dust pressed further, but Nightmare stopped him before he could do permanent damage and accidentally kill his brand new toy. The taller entity grabbed Dust’s wrist with a tendril of his corruption, causing Dust to grit his teeth and jerk his hand back immediately. “Fuck off,” he muttered, although Nightmare seemed to ignore him. The sentence wouldn’t likely go unpunished, but the goop-lord was preoccupied with examining their newly acquired plaything for now.

**“Care to tell me who you are? And how you gave Error so much trouble?”** Nightmare questioned, running a curious fingertip along that line of odd silver trickling up Starspen’s neck bones.

“How he had so much trouble?” they questioned, starting to feel a little dizzy from the way all of their magic was flowing to their head. “Do you mean catching me? I mean, that’s probably because I didn’t wanna get captured. So I ran. Like I think most people would.”

**“I asked for answers,** **_not_ ** **vague sass,”** Nightmare snarled, gripping Starspen’s cheeks harshly. The grey bones of her cheeks squished a bit in his grasp, her blue, gold, and green tongue peeking out between her teeth. She stared right back as Nightmare glowered at her despite that silly face, and eventually she managed to exert a grin between his harsh fingers.

“You’re awfully close. I’m not sure if I would wanna kiss a stranger, though.”

Nightmare recoiled as if he’d been burned, a hiss of disgust leaving him. Killer seemed perturbed, Error also disgusted, but Dust and the other, larger skeleton in the background that Starspen didn’t know the name of seemed to both be amused despite their best efforts to contain it. Which was hardly at all, but at least they  _ thought _ about it.

“Told-old you it was stu-stupid,” Error grumbled after the initial recovery from the shock of hearing such a thing.

**“... Fine. Get rid of it,”** Nightmare said, tone brooding and annoyed. It’s clear that the fact that Starspen wasn’t intimidated by him was frustrating him. No matter. He’d simply wait for her to fall asleep… Then she would regret it.  **“Lock them up and get them out of my sight. I’ll deal with it later.”**

Error seemed incensed by the fact that Nightmare wasn’t taking his advice, and tightened the strings on Starspen to where they painfully started to slice into her grey and black bones, encouraging more of that silver blood to flow against the wounds. “Idiots! It’s just going to cause-ause more problems-ems!”

**“Killer… Deal with it,”** Nightmare said, disinterested and turning away. Error hissed as Killer was immediately upon him, slicing at him with a knife he kept on his person.

The glitch jumped back a bit, avoiding the cutting motion… But Killer brought the edge of the knife back again and caught some of the strings Error held in his hands. “YOU FU-U-UCKING IDIOT-”

Too late. With an off-guard cry of alarm, Starspen fell from the ceiling as their restraints jostled and  _ snapped _ , sending them crashing to the large table below. Papers scattered every which way, fluttering to the floor as Dust and his larger companion immediately jumped to arms. Starspen shook her head as she stood up, stumbling a bit as her magic blood rushed back to where it was supposed to be from her head. “Whew, that’s a relief…” Before Dust grabbed at her, Starspen took a step back… and toppled off the edge of the table with an indignant yowl. You think with her ability to predict the attack, she’d have also predicted the edge…

Standing up quickly once more, Starspen jumped out of the way as the larger, still unknown skeleton made a grab for her as well. 

**“You morons! Dust, Axe, stop playing around and** **_catch_ ** **her!”** Nightmare growled.

From there, the room dissolved into chaos. Killer and Error were struggling in the background, with Error spitting curses at the other skeleton. Dust and Axe both tried to make a grab for Starspen at the same time, but being shorter, it was easy enough to duck underneath their arms and let them crash into each other as she escaped their grip.

It was much like a bunch of men scrambling around, trying to catch a bird that had flown into the house from an open window, chirping and screaming as hands passed them, but never quite able to grasp.

There was a frustrated snarl from Dust as he brandished that broken, sharpened bone from earlier. Apparently, he’d had enough of the chasing and constant skittering away of Starspen. He threw his weapon at her like a dart, and even as she ducked out of the way, it caught the shoulder of the sleeve of her shirt and pinned that side of her body to one of the walls. 

By the time Starspen had twisted around and grabbed the bone, yanking it out of the wall and freeing herself, that gave Nightmare enough time to grab her arms and waist with a tentacle. He squeezed her like a snake would a rat, anger clear on his dark expression. She let out a wheeze, wriggling a little bit, but deemed that in this case, the snake was stronger.

**“You little nuisance… I suppose I have to do everything myself,”** Nightmare sighed before turning on his heel and dragging Starspen along behind him. The bones of her legs and her magic skin scraped uncomfortably against the scratchy stone floor of the meeting room, but otherwise she made herself much like a limp noodle as Nightmare dragged her away.

“Sounds tiring. Maybe you should take a break!” She chirped, and Nightmare sent her a cold glare from over his shoulder. She huffed a bit, muttering something under her breath, which was promptly lost as Nightmare opened a door and tossed her into a dim room.

**“What a grand idea. I think I will, and deal with you later,”** he said, looking down at Starspen after she straightened up against the wall he had thrown her against.

The changeling sent him an offended look, but the eye contact didn’t last long before tall, dark, and goopy slammed the heavy door shut and locked it behind him.

Outside, Nightmare looked satisfied with himself and yet annoyed at his underlings at the same time. Starspen had skittered every which way across the room, leaving tiny spatters of silver blood and now-filthy papers that had been pushed all over the dirty stone.  **“I’m tired of cleaning up your messes. Do it yourselves, for once,”** he hissed in everyone else’s general direction.

Error had stopped fighting with Killer a long time ago, and had already fled the scene. Meanwhile, Killer looked a bit like a kicked puppy as his overlord left the room without him, commanding him not to follow.

Dust looked at the papers and silver blood scattering the room of the meeting area before he just shrugged and looked over to Axe lazily. Axe shook his head and stuck his hands into his jacket pockets, as did Dust. 

“I don’t wanna clean it up,” Axe muttered, and Dust sneered at him.

“if he thinks i’m doing it, he’s crazier than you are,” Dust huffed out, gaining a sore look from Axe as he made that rude comment.

“Yeah, I’m the crazy one…” Axe mumbled. Dust sent him a glare, so he immediately left the premises before he could get scorned or possibly attacked.

  
  
  


All was peaceful, surprisingly, after that. Things seemed to calm down and other than the muffled complaints coming from Starspen behind the locked door, everything was back to its semi-normal status. As fate would have it, however, it wouldn’t be meant to last for very long, of course…

There was an awful sort of ruckus coming from the kitchen. It sounded like the clattering of a thousand Undynes cooking breakfast at the same time, which was possibly an overstatement and maybe a bit dramatic… But that’s how Dust felt about being woken up from his stress nap. He stomped through the hallway and too the kitchen, bone in hand, prepared to tear someone a new one before he saw what was taking place in the room.

Starspen and Axe both froze, the sound of a very obvious mess being made suddenly crashing to a halt in a pregnant silence that took over the kitchen. Dust blinked a couple of times, looking from Starspen to Axe. “... seriously? you’re letting them feed you?”

Axe, sheepish, swallowed the greedy bite he had taken of the food he had been offered. How could he say no?! It smelled tasty, and he was hungry. Granted, he was always hungry, but that didn’t matter. “Well… It’s good,” he huffed.

Dust narrowed his sockets, a remark forming in his throat, when he suddenly realised something. He swiftly did a double-take, staring once more over at Starspen, a growl starting to rise from his chest. “you... let... her out?”

Axe waved his hands, ready to offer and explanation to save his ass, but Starspen chimed in before he could. “Oh, no, Axe didn’t let me out of the room! I just got bored of waiting. It’s been like… an hour. I wanted to do something else other than hide in that weird dark room,” she explained, not really earning her any appreciation.

**“What the hell is going on in- oh for fuck’s sake,”** Nightmare snarled once he saw that Starspen was free, snatching her with a tendril before she could scuttle away like the little gremlin she was.  **“How hard is it to keep** **_one_ ** **skeleton contained?!”** he berated the other two, while Killer trotted in behind him through the archway and watched on curiously.

Dust bristled at this, angrily shoving his hands into his jacket pockets as he grit his teeth together. “not everything is our fault, you know,” he hissed.

**“Well it certainly wasn’t mine. I’m the one that keeps catching her in the first place,”** Nightmare snapped back, raising Starspen up off the floor as she tried to walk away instead during the other two’s conversation.

Incensed, Dust snarled at the taller, goopier monster and raised his hackles. Contract be damned. He was about to show this bastard what he really fucking thought. Starspen interrupted as usual, though, kicking her feet a little bit in an attempt to touch the toes of her sneakers to the ground. “Can I come down now?”

**_“NO,”_ ** everyone shouted simultaneously, save for Killer, who was still watching from the background.

Starspen startled a little bit at the vehement response, letting out a short, frustrated huff. “Come on man, I waited for you and you never came back so I got bored and let myself out. I was so patient and everything! But don’t blame them. I’m just not really containable because… you know. Portals,” Starspen explained, earning an icy glare from Nightmare as he dragged her closer.

**“Anymore from you and I’ll be painting stars on the ceiling with that pretty blood of yours,”** he hissed, tepid breath washing over Starspen’s face and causing her to blink a few times.

“... That’d be pretty ironic, actually-” she didn’t really get a chance to finish before Nightmare immediately reached his limit and yeeted her out the window. Everyone else stared with a surprised expression as the glass shattered, scattering all over the floor, and a small scream of what… seemed like  _ delight _ followed Starspen out the window.

Nightmare stared at the broken panes for a long moment as if deciding how to react to himself losing his temper before he just sighed and slumped his shoulders. **“Clean up this mess. Or** **_else_ ** **,”** he growled at the others, sending a glare to poor Killer as well, who had been automatically left to clean up the last one. He shrunk anyways, not daring to protest.

“That was fun! Throw me again!” a familiar voice cheeped, startling all of the others in the room into whipping around to stare at and regard Starspen with shock.

**“What-”**

“Portals, remember? I mean. I can open them while falling, too. It’s not like it suddenly stops me from doing so,” Starspen sassed, earning herself a steamed expression from Nightmare.

With an exasperated tone, the dark entity put a hand on his face and grit his teeth together.  **“That’s it. I’ve had enough of this. If you like portals so much, you should check** **_this_ ** **one out!”** he suddenly proclaimed, snapping his head up with a manic grin.

Uh oh. everyone else backed off, knowing what kind of troubling promises that look held. Starspen, not being so familiarly acquainted, cocked her head to the side. “But I don’t see a portal?”

A dark, wet laugh bubbled from Nightmare’s chest as he snatched her up once more- you know, she was really getting tired of that- and held her high above his head.  **“Don’t worry! You’ll find this** **_very_ ** **enjoyable,”** Nightmare snarled, the smell of earth darkened by rain and covered in shadow and mist filling the room and mixing the the sharp scent of ozone as the entity opened a portal that frayed at the edges, melding into the floor. 

With a grunt, he threw the nuisance full-force into the portal he had opened, still grinning as he closed it firmly behind Starspen, cutting off her screams.

“... dare I ask…”

**“I sent our enemies a much needed and belated…** **_care package_ ** **,”** Nightmare hissed in response to Dust’s question, sending a cold look his way.

Axe was silently sniffing around the food in the background, ignoring the awkward silence, and even Dust found himself pitying the next idiots that had to deal with that cryptid leech.

Right before the band of of universal misfits could disperse, all of them very unlikely to clean up the mess left behind, someone else poked their head into the kitchen. 

“Hey, I’m back from the- …” Cross suddenly stopped in his tracks, glancing at all of his friends and around the disaster that was the kitchen. After a long, pregnant pause… he slowly leaned over and dropped two bags of groceries as if they were toxic. He took a few steps away before turning around to make a break for it.

“Hey! Don’t think you can walk away without sharing the mess!” Killer finally spoke up, giving chase to Cross as soon as the other skeleton started to break out into a run.

Nightmare watched on, like an uninterested dog owner that was watching their dog run after a squirrel in the backyard. Meanwhile, Axe and Dust collected the food left over in the kitchen and made a break for it as well, leaving Nightmare to himself… with the mess. Like always.

The dark skeleton looked down at the groceries on the floor and sighed to himself, world weary and done with the week as a whole. This was it. He was going to kill them all. They weren’t worth it anymore. Today was the day!

Although, he probably said that every day, didn’t he?


End file.
